
Norröna ferry expansion nearly complete
“A need for travel has of course come up. We are getting a lot of enquiries. People are starting to think and ask about it, but it’s all focused on the late summer. July and August these enquiries and even questions of if it will extend into September, in the direction of the autumn,” says Linda Björk Gunnlaugsdóttir, CEO of Smyril Line Iceland.
It will be a rather different Norröna that docks in Seyðisfjörður on 9th March, as a whole new deck has been added on top with a new restaurant, bar, and hot tubs, as well as 50 new cabins, and an internal refurbishment.
Before the changes, Norröna could carry just less than 1,500 passengers and 900 vehicles. The passenger capacity now increases by 100, and the ferry becomes even more like a cruise ship. In recent years, Norröna has brought an average of 1,100 people and 700 vehicles to and from Iceland each week during the peak season.
Linda says previous ideas to use the journey time to Iceland as quarantine for COVID-19 have not been accepted by the authorities, but she says the situation may improve rapidly as more people are vaccinated. “Yes, it is just hopefully. We just need to have it confirmed which certifications Iceland will accept. In what form they must be. The chief epidemiologist has been in the news saying work is underway on unified confirmations that Iceland can approve with the European Union, so we will just follow the rules they come out with. But hopefully it will be that vaccinated people get to travel, and that they will come to Iceland.”